Russian Muslim clerics warn of unrest over ban of translation of Koran ~ By Alissa de Carbonnel

MOSCOW | Fri Sep 20, 2013

(Reuters) - Russia's senior Islamic clerics warned the country's leaders on Friday unrest could erupt in Muslim communities in Russia and beyond if a court decision ordering the destruction of a interpretive translation of Koran is not overturned.

Tuesday's ruling by a court in Novorossiysk, a city in southern Russia, ordered the widely read text outlawed under a Russian anti-extremism law that rights activists say has been abused by local officials out of prejudice or to persecute groups frowned upon by the dominant Russian Orthodox Church.

Rights campaigners said that the decision, which will apply nationwide unless it is overturned on appeal, comes dangerously close to banning the Koran itself.

Russia's Council of Muftis sounded the alarm in an open letter on Friday to President Vladimir Putin, who has frequently called for unity among the leading faiths and warned that ethnic tension could tear Russia apart.

"Russian Muslims are very strongly indignant over such an outrageous decision," Rushan Abbyasov, the deputy head of the council, which has close ties with the Kremlin, told Reuters.

If the ruling is acted on, the cleric warned: "There will be unrest ... not only in Russia but all over the world, we are talking about the destruction of the Koran."

In the letter to Putin, the council drew a parallel with violence in the Middle East and Afghanistanover the actions of an American pastor, Terry Jones, who threatened to burn the Koran on September 11, 2010.

"Is it necessary to discuss how the destruction of books, especially sacred religious books, has been received in Russia in the past?" it said.

"We recall how the burning of just a few copies of the Holy Koran by a crazy American pastor elicited a firm protest not just from Russian Muslims but from our entire society, in solidarity with the stormy and longlasting anger of the global Muslim community and all people of goodwill," it said.

A lawyer representing the text's author, Azeri theologian Elmir Kuliyev, said he will appeal the ruling, which calls for the text to be banned and copies of it "destroyed".

"This is pure idiocy. Some local prosecutor sent this material to a local court and they together decided to ban a holy book," lawyer Murat Musayev, who has one month to appeal the ruling, told Reuters.

"On the one hand there is freedom of religion in Russia, on the other they are banning fundamental religious texts."

Experts say the more than decade-old translation by Kuliyev is a respected scholarly work, one of four translations of the Koran into Russian.

"This is one step away from banning the Koran," said Akhmed Yarlikapov, an expert on Islam with the Russian Academy of Sciences.

"This is a very high quality translation," he said. "The banning of Kuliyev's translation is utterly unprofessional, you could ban the Bible just as easily because it also has passages that talk about the spilling of blood."

BLACKLIST

Putin has championed the dominant Russian Orthodox Church as a moral compass but has also called for a multicultural Russian identity and emphasized the need to avoid religious strife in a country with a Muslim minority estimated at about 15 percent.

The government is fighting against a persistent Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, spawned by separatist wars in Chechnya, and tension between ethnic Russians and Muslim minorities have led to outbursts of violence across the country.

Since Russia's anti-extremism law was passed in 2002, with the purpose of curbing potential militant threats, over 2,000 publications have been placed on a blacklist posted on the Justice Ministry's website.

The inclusion of some texts, such as the Russian edition of the diaries of Nazi Germany's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf", has won praise from human rights campaigners.

But critics say too many innocuous works have been added, threatening the rights of minority groups. Analysts say the abuse stems from vague wording in the law and procedures that empowering local official in a flawed justice system.

Once a court anywhere in Russia judges a text extremist, it is automatically added to the nationwide blacklist.

Among the controversial materials included are the books of Turkish theologian Said Nursi, another of Kuliyev's works, a hadith collection of the sayings of the prophet Muhammad and Jehovah's Witnesses' basic texts.

"The way that the extremism law works is this kind of unstoppable mechanism that allows very junior courts to ban what they like," said Geraldine Fagan, an expert and author of a book on Russian religious policy.

"This is quite a momentous case. It could be the case that turns everything around and triggers a reversal of the general tendency, although that would surprise me," Fagan said.

"There doesn't seem to be any political will whatsoever to stop this from happening despite very high level criticism."

A is A: Aristotle's Law of Identity. Everything that exists has a specific nature. And Islam and the Quran have a very specific nature. So this is a very good step in the right direction. Thetruth about the quranmust be exposed. The book compels Muslims to hate, oppress and slaughter non-Muslims and non-practicing Muslims. Civilized peoples should denounce such vicious, annihilationist propaganda, not be forced to "respect it." The Obama adminsitration, for example, furiously scrubs jihad and Islam from counter-terror materials and from actual jihadi attacks (ie Fort Hood).

"Russian court in Krasnodar orders Quran to be added to Federal list of ‘extremist materials’" By The Muslim Issue

“According to the report on the study by the Forensic Center… in the books there are statements containing a positive assessment of hostilities of a group relative to another group of persons united, on the grounds of their attitude to religion, in particular, Muslims against non-Muslims; as well as the statements of encouragement, for semantic understanding calling for hostile and violent actions of one group of people against another group of persons united by religion, in particular, Muslims against non-Muslims.”“…the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation to include the Edition to the federal list of extremist materials.”

Russians are once more becoming heroes. No matter how sad it sounds that we now have to turn to a bunch of commies and delinquent KGB officers for any common sense (‘commie-sense’), Putin has proven to be one of the few voices of reason lately. Let’s not forget that Putin warned Europe and the U.S. repeatedly for many years not to permit Muslim immigration into the countries, or they risk an endless infiltration of extremists and deliberate expansion of radical cells within the country itself by the Muslim immigrants they let in. No one listened to him. We are firmly heading towards the same situation we saw in Kenya yesterday. It’s only a matter of time.

Russia has centuries of experience of battling with Muslim extremism and being subject to their endless aggressions and provocations. And now more communists come forth with more sense than the rest of the so called ‘progressive world’ combined: The Quran has finally and rightfully been declared AN EXTREMIST BOOK by court of law and added to a federal list of extremist materials. At least in Novorossiysk, Krasnodar in Russia.

The October District Court of the hero-city of Novorossiisk was satisfied with the statement of the Novorossiysk transport Prosecutor of recognizing extremist books and the translation of the Holy Quran in Russian language.

Novorossiysk transport Prosecutor’s Office, during the course of the Investigations Division in Novorossiysk, to dismiss the criminal case based on elements of crime under part 1 article 282 of the RUSSIAN CRIMINAL CODE, established that in the text of the book “translation of the Holy Quran in Russian language/translation from Arabic E.r. Kuliev. 1, edition of the King Fahd complex for printing the Holy Quran. p.o. box 6262. Medina Munavvara. Saudi Arabia, 2002.1088 s”, arrived in the international postal administration no. EM 177973005,describes possible extremist content.

So, according to the report on the study by the Forensic Center of the RUSSIAN MINISTRY of the INTERIOR for the Krasnodar territory, in the books there are statements that negatively evaluated a person or a group of persons on the grounds of ties to a specific religion (in particular, non-Muslims) and are saying that they are talking about the superiority of one person or group of persons in front of other people on grounds of their attitude to religion, in particular, of Muslims over non-Muslims; statements containing a positive assessment of hostilities of a group relative to another group of persons united, on the grounds of their attitude to religion, in particular, Muslims against non-Muslims; as well as the statements of encouragement, for semantic understanding calling for hostile and violent actions of one group of people against another group of persons united by religion, in particular, Muslims against non-Muslims.

Dissemination of extremist materials leads to an increase in extremist crime that endangers the national security of the State the Novorossiysk transport Prosecutor concluded based on 1. Article 45 of the code of civil procedure of the Russian Federation Prosecutor turn in court in defense of the interests of the Russian Federation.

The Kastrychnitski District Court of Novorossiysk from 17.09.2013 statement the Prosecutor met in full: old book “translation of the Holy Quran in Russian language/translation from Arabic E.r. Kuliev. 1, edition of the King Fahd complex for printing the Holy Quran. p.o. box 6262. Medina Munavvara. Saudi Arabia, 2002.1088″ with focus on extremism.

After the Court decision enter into force it will be instructed that the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation to include the Edition to the federal list of extremist materials.

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